15 mei 2011

Three Trapped Tigers: coiled intensity @ Nuits Bota

'Prog rock' is a label that strikes fear into all but the most stout-hearted. For many, the prospect of tricky time signatures and technical virtuosity is not exactly a draw. Intelligent dance music is another genre that might be thought to speak more to the head than to the heart.

But Three Trapped Tigers showed how the wrong the doubters are on Friday in the Museum at Nuits Botanique. Whether it's called prog, IDM, math-rock or post-rock this is music of passion and intensity.

The Botanique Museum - transformed into the 'Grand Salon' by throw-rugs armchairs and the odd stuffed bird - was also the ideal seting to enjoy it. The band played with the audience 'in the round' so if you feel like getting a better look at what the drummer is doing then you can just move seat and sit behind his shoulder!

And trust us - you always want to see what drummer Adam Betts is doing. He moves effortlessly from powerful rock rhythms to complex drum'n'base patterns, all the while using one hand to trigger rat-at-tat machine-gun-like delays from a control pad.

Matt Calvert's faster-than-the-eye-can-see dexterity on guitar also meshed impressively with Tom Rogerson on a bewildering bank of keyboards. The band played a series of numbers (literally - the songs have numbers for titles) from their three EPs to date - before previewing a couple off their new album out at the end of this month.